Server Side Includes (SSI)

SSI can save you a lot of time and code.

SSI (Server Side Includes) is an affective way to include dynamic content thoughout a web site. This is accomplished by putting one line of code on various web pages which references and outputs code from one location. SSI can is often used for web site headers, footers, and for elements like news scripts. SSI is makes us of CGI which it a feature provided by almost all hosting providers nowadays. Similar results can also be had by uses PHP, ASP, or other server languages. But, anywho, let's get started.

The basic syntax for SSI is:

The most widely used SSI's are CGI execution, Include File, and Time and Date inclusion. Here is the syntax, for example, if you execute a cgi script called file.cgi:

If you wanted to include an HTML fragment saved as the file, "file.html," you would use the following code:

Lastly, to include the date, you would use:

In the first version of Spoono, we once included a footer using SSI at the bottom of every page which looked like this:

This linked to the footer.cgi file which contained the following:

You might not understand the CGI portion, but you get the idea that the HTML is what is inserted. Similarly, I could use the include file command and create a footer.html file (note: use include file with HTML files and exec cgi for CGI files). For example, here is what footer.html would look like:

And to insert this HTML using the include file command, input this code:

For a quick review, the general form for making an a exec cgi file like our footer example is like the following:

Remember #!/usr/bin/perl is the path to PERL for Spoono, contact your server administrator for your PERL path. Also, save this as a cgi file, and upload it to your server (CHMOD: 755), and call it, as described, in the file where you want to include the HTML.

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